Friday, 22 February 2013

Let me now go back and look at the improvements that have been made to the SFRSD over the past years.

All of these images were taken in 2005. They show that a lot more work has gone into the area at the end of Augusta. The two GP 20's sitting at the loco service area are two that I painted and Decaled long before they were released, that always seems to happen!

Monday, 18 February 2013

Quite a lot of time went into deciding just what and how I could achieve in this new layout. Lots of pencil drawings of track plans for various towns, how would this fit here and how wide should I make this peninsular. I started with a sheet of graph paper (remember this was 1994) and that's all I had at that time. My good friend Ron and I labored over the yards the most ( Augusta and Flynn ) as I wanted to make them as close to what a prototype would do as I could and at the same time easy to work for my crew.

The layout room (shed ) is about 13 feet 6 inches x 19 feet 6 inches

The duck-under was not in the first phase of the build and was a suggestion by many of my crew, so it just had to be built.
That's it for today.
Rod.

Saturday, 16 February 2013

These next images are of the track between Red Rock and Flynn. Flynn is the last town (yard) on the SFRSD where all trains that arrive here are reclassified for the locals and return of empty grain hoppers back to Augusta.

This is the town of Guthrie, not too much here. Just the backdrop scenery.

A very bare Flynn

I am not sure if you have noticed that the backdrops have just a hint of scenery painted. I did this long before I started to lay any track. It was a very simple way to get a lot done in a very short amount of time.
My first job was to spray a very light mist of Liquitex white all around the lower half of the already painted blue backdrop. Keeping the air pressure very low in my airbrush I did not end up with too much over spray.
For the next stage I tore a page of newspaper roughly in half and used masking tape at the top to stick it to the backdrop with the roughly torn edge just a few inches above where I wanted the scenery, then with my airbrush on a light air pressure airbrushed the distant hills in a blue almost the same as the sky with just a hint of green in the mix. By allowing the paper to flap a little I was able to achieve a softer edge thus eliminating a sharp line to these hills. A bit more of a darker green and a bit lower with the paper and the result turned out ok.

This image might show the process of painting my backdrop better than my description

This just about completes the first pass of building my Santa Fe Railway Southern Division. These previous images have shown the bare bones of the RR, there is a lot more to follow and a bit more of the story of just how this RR got started.
Thanks for dropping by.
Rod.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Red Rock also took a while to get it looking the way I had envisioned. A small area with a gas station, general store and a repair shop, oh and of course a grain elevator.
This is one of the earlier shots.

Starting to get a feel for it in 1999

I've jumped ahead a few years with this shot. This was taken in 2004 a lot has changed.

The culvert just pass Red Rock on the way to the old Guthrie. This was about 2001.

Putting in these old shots sure brings back a lot of memories and shows just how far the RR has come over time.
Thanks for coming back, more in a couple of days.
Rod.

Thursday, 7 February 2013

The next lot of images should take us along through the town of Winfield and on to Hackney.
These images were taken around 2001 and a lot more has been done since so we will get to that later.

We have just run past the Winfield depot and now passing the scratch-built Fitzpatrick Plastics plant

Around the left hand super-elevated curve heading to hackney

Vic built these abutments out of plaster. I painted and weathered them.

Vic and I were working on laying the track here one evening and decided to add the bridge as the area looked very plain. So by 10.00pm that night the roadbed had been cut abutments and deck fitted and track installed.

SD45 Kodachrome rounding the curve into Hackney. I kit-bashed the SD45 B unit

Passing the McFarlane Redi-Mix plant

The McFarlane Redi Mix plant is scratch built using electrical conduit and lots of styrene. Vic etched the hand rails. The building is a slightly modified Micro Engineering kit.

Passing the scratch-built repair shop from photo's I took on a trip to Ransom Illinois.

Almost all of the elevator complex at Hackney is scratch-built, the bins are HO scale from Rix

Monday, 4 February 2013

I will keep moving in a clockwise direction with my scenery images so you can tell where the images are in relation to the track plan posted earlier. So in the last post we had just gone behind the elevators at Udall.
Now we will venture further along the track. There have been a lot of changes to the scenery since these were taken but I will keep those till later so you can tell the difference.

The SD40 -2 is just heading into the passing siding at Udall the Dash 8 is no longer on the roster.

I added the smoke deflectors and painted this GP35 from a prototype image.

Heading into Winfield lots more done since this was shot. I will show the changes later.

I appreciate the time you have taken to look at my posts so thanks for that.
Until the next post thanks
Rod.

Friday, 1 February 2013

In my last post I now realize that I jumped ahead just a bit to far, so today I want to go back a few years to early 2003.The National N Scale convention was being held in Melbourne for the second time in April of 2003 ( the first was 1991) and this time we decided to have layouts as part of the convention rather than self drive tours as at some of the previous conventions held in other states.
My layout was on the list for about 140 odd N Scalers to attend over the course of the day in three buses arriving one after the other.
So whilst cleaning the track in preparation one of my already ballasted in place turnouts decided that it's throw-bar would break away from the point rails. The soldered joint was very weak. At this stage of layout development all of my turnouts were hand thrown and that's the way I thought that I would go even as the layout progressed. A bit of muttering both out loud and under my breath I replaced the turnout and everything was then ok for the convention open day. The tour went well and so after a bit of thinking and discussion with close friends it was decided that to be really sure this was not going to happen again that I should remove all of the M,E turnouts and modify them, big call, there was over 50 in place so let's think about this some more.
Well after discussions with my Financial Controller (missus) we decided that once these turnouts were modified I would go ahead and fit Tortoise motors at the same time. I owe her big time.
So out they came one by one and modified to the very best level we could. New full length point blades were made, printed circuit board ties were fitted near the frog with isolation gaps cut to prevent shorts and we powered the frog. Each of these were fitted back in place and the tortoise motors installed.
I started at the town of Winfield and gradually worked my way through Red Rock, Ponca City, Hackney and Guthrie having first to soften the ballast and carefully remove the turnouts without damaging them and the track on either side. Augusta and Flynn were the biggest yards so I called in some help. Fortunately Augusta was still void of any scenery so it made that yard a whole lot easier.
Two new control panels were made to allow the fitment of the turnout toggle switches at Augusta as there was just no room with the DC block control switches already in place.

Here is John helping to fit Tortoise motors at Augusta

The deep fascias made a big difference at least we could get our hands in some of the way.

Here is a view of Augusta from the entry door. The duck-under connects with Flynn for continuous running.

As we wired the motors we made sure that we added all 8 wires so we could connect them to some of the signals that were already in place only to show the state of the turnout. I also added metal rail joiners on each track of the turnouts and cut rail gaps under the signals and filled these with styrene and glued them in with super glue. Once dry I gently filed them to the profile of the track and now you can hardly tell they are there.
A very big job and made harder by having to retro fit the motors. Thanks to John F and John C for their tireless help it sure does make it easier when one has good friends to assist.
That's it for this post so until the next.
Thanks for dropping by.
Rod.